On the train from Delhi to Jaipur, we were served bottled water, where Pepsi's water line Aquafina was the brand of choice. On the streets of Jaipur, there was another culture of water. At the peak of drought, small thatched huts called Jal Mandirs (water temples) were put up to give water from earthen water pots as a free gift to the thirsty. Jal Mandirs are a part of an ancient tradition of setting up Piyaos, free water stands in public areas. This was a clash between two cultures: a culture that sees water as sacred and treats its provision as a duty for the preservation of life and another that sees water as a commodity, and its ownership and trade as a fundamental corporate right.
-- Vandana Shiva
The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement of GATT/WTO has globalized US-style patent laws. This has far-reaching consequences and impacts not only on our capacity to provide for our basic needs of food and medicine, but also on democracy and sovereignity. The universalization of patents to cover all subject matter, including life forms, has resulted in patents invading our forests and farms, our kitchens, and our medicinal plant gardens.
-- Vandana Shiva
Patents are now granted not just for machines but for life forms and biodiversity; not just for new inventions but for the knowledge of our grandmothers.
-- Vandana Shiva
Indigenous knowledge which India has used over centuries for everyday needs - neem, haldi, karela, jamun, kali mirch, bhu-amla and hundreds of other plants used in food and medicine.
-- Vandana Shiva
The western patents lobby would however have us believe that patents are necessary are necessary for growth and high standards of living in free markets which are realized through technology generation. IPRs help stimulate investment, particularly foreign direct investment (FDI), technology transfer from [global] North to South, and research and innovation, by allowing inventors to recoup R&D costs. Essentially then the public benefits of patenting and disclosure far outweigh the costs of artificial monopolies in the marketplace. The real picture however couldn't be more different. IPRs have been used for plain 'political coercion' by industrial countries, particularly the US. By the late 1970s and 1980s the US government had acknowledged that a structural technology gap was seriously emerging between its economy and Japan's. Therefore, policy was directed to aggressively freeze the artificial advantage still enjoyed by American industry through an expansive IPR policy. A survey carried out in 1984 bears this out. Over eighty per cent of the companies contacted indicated that 'blocking technical areas' with no intention of working the invention was prime motive for patenting. Patents are described as 'trump cards' to negotiate licences. In other words, the patent system 'regulates' competition. It does not necessarily stimulate technology generation, much less diffusion.
-- Vandana Shiva
IPRs are essentially a market distortion, a government sanctioned monopoly and subsidy. IPRs put territorial borders around technologies and other inventions so that firms can capture higher profits.
-- Vandana Shiva
In the long term, a strong IPR system can result in price discriminations and many market distorting practices like patent pooling, tied up sales, cross licensing and refusal to licence.
-- Vandana Shiva
Patents are then intrinsically conflict-laden. They embody conflicts between individual rights and the public interest. Patent systems are sites if a basic conflict between private ownership, creation of monopolies and private benefits against public interest and the social benefits of science and technology.
-- Vandana Shiva
Due to the inherent conflict between private and public interest, patent laws are strong for protecting the private interest are thus week for protecting the public interest. However, there is no 'strong' or 'weak' patent law in an absolute sense, Strengths and weaknesses are basically relative to the interest being protected. The one-sided reference to 'strong systems' in the debate on IPRs in GATT has an underlying, tacit assumption that only corporate rights count.
-- Vandana Shiva
Patents for living organisms impoverish human society ethically, ecologically and economically, though they bring commercial gains to a handful of corporations.
-- Vandana Shiva
If human society, in all it's diversity, has to be ethically, ecologically and economically enriched, alternatives to patents have to be evolved.
-- Vandana Shiva
Patents reflect human arrogance, treating scientists as 'creators' of living organisms. Reward for innovation in these areas needs to be based on the recognition of the creativity and generative structures intrinsic to all living organisms.
-- Vandana Shiva
Patents give the patent holder the exclusive right to his invention covering the making, rising, exercising, selling or distribution of the patented article or substance. In the case of patents on life, this implies that a patent holder can prevent others from making or using patented seeds, plants and animals. Since living resources and life forms 'make' themselves, and farmers have always saved their seeds and retained their calves, seed saving and exchange is treated as 'intellectual property theft' in western-style patent laws.
-- Vandana Shiva
Patents also reflect the arrogance of western civilization, as in the case of patents on neem. The properties of neem that make it useful as a biopesticide have been known and utilized in India for centuries. They were not an invention of the scientists, who have been granted patents for neem biopesticide. Such intellectual property rights are in fact intellectual piracy rights. To avoid such piracy, it is essential that the collective innovation of Third World communities be recognized.
-- Vandana Shiva
In today's world, patents affect our daily lives.
-- Vandana Shiva
Historically, countries which lagged behind in the technology race used patents to 'catch up' with countries technologically more advanced. Technology was 'borrowed' for a specific time period and patents provided monopoly or exclusive rights to the person introducing the invention, giving the person reward and protection. However, in today's context, patents are used as instruments to prevent technology transfer from advanced countries and transfer of knowledge is seen as 'piracy'.
-- Vandana Shiva
Two elements have had critical influence in shaping US laws and hence in shaping global laws. The first is the myth of 'discovery' that goes hand-in-hand with the original definition of the scope of letters patent that allowed it to be said that Columbus 'discovered' America. The second is the myth of 'ignorance as innovation'. For example, if somebody in Europe were operating a machine and someone in the US independently and without knowledge of that existence in good faith developed his/her own invention, which was essentially the same machine, the fact that a similar machine was already operating in Europe would not prevent him/her from obtaining a patent in the US. The European invention would not be considered prior art in US law. This is categorically stated in the Connecticut law which treats invention as 'bringing in the supply of good from foreign parts, that is not as yet of use among us'.
-- Vandana Shiva
Today, land and gold have given way to knowledge as the wealth of nations. Property in factories, minerals, real estate and gold is being rapidly replaced by property in products of the mind or 'intellectual property'. Patents which refer to knowledge as 'property' remain an instrument of colonization. While colonial wars of the past were fought over geographical territory, colonization today is based on wars over intellectual territory.
-- Vandana Shiva
Patents have become the most important asset of the US and a growing component of exports. In 1947, intellectual property comprised just under ten per cent of all US exports. In 1986, the figure had grown to thirty-seven per cent and by 1994 it was well over fifty per cent.
-- Vandana Shiva
The myth that patents contribute to the stimulation of creativity and inventiveness and their absence to lack of creativity and ingenuity is based on an artificial construction of knowledge and innovation.
-- Vandana Shiva
Knowledge, however, by it's very nature is a collective and cumulative enterprise. It is based on exchange within a community. It is an expression of human creativity; both individual and collective. Since creativity has diverse expressions, science is a pluralistic enterprise which refers to different 'ways of knowing'.
-- Vandana Shiva
The term 'science' cannot be used to refer only to modern western science. It should include the knowledge systems of diverse cultures in different periods of history.
-- Vandana Shiva
Recent work in the history, philosophy and sociology of science has revealed that scientists do not work with an abstract scientific method, putting forward theories based on direct and neutral observation. Modern science does not leave us with any criteria that distinguish the theoretical claims of modern western science from those of indigenous non-western sciences. And although the totally artificial Cartesian construction of a disembodied mind generating knowledge was given up a century ago, it is still the model on which patent regimes are based.
-- Vandana Shiva
Recognition of diverse traditions of creativity is an essential component of keeping diverse knowledge systems alive.
-- Vandana Shiva
Indigenous knowledge systems are by and large ecological, while the dominant model of scientific knowledge, characterized by reductionism and fragmentation, is not equipped to take the complexity of interrelations in nature fully into account.
-- Vandana Shiva
The economic inequality between the affluent industrialized countries and the poor Third World countries is a product of 500 years of colonialism, and the continued maintenance and creation of mechanisms for draining wealth out of the Third World.
-- Vandana Shiva
The argument frequently promoted for a uniform worldwide IPR system is that such a system will promote investment research and technology transfer in developing countries. The 'disclosure' clauses in patent laws which are related to medieval incentives for 'revealing the mysteries of the art' are now conveniently projected as necessary for the transferring of knowledge to society. However, the opposite is true. When companies can import products under import monopolies granted by patents, they have no incentive to set up local R&D, or transfer technology for local production.
-- Vandana Shiva
The privatization of research has not led to competition but consolidation. Pharmaceutical, food, chemical, cosmetics, energy and seed industries are combining to form giant life-sciences corporations. In 1998, the top ten companies in each industry controlled 32 per cent of the $23 billion seed industry, 35 per cent of the $297 billion pharmaceutical industry, 60 per cent of the $17 billion veterinary medicine, and 85 per cent of the $31 billion pesticide industry.
-- Vandana Shiva
Industrial countries hold 97 per cent of all patents worldwide. In 1995, the US alone collected half the royalty fees in the world. Just ten countries have 95 per cent of the US patents and capture 90 per cent of the cross-border royalties and licensing fees, and 70 per cent of the global royalty and licensing for payments were between parent and affiliate multinational corporations.
-- Vandana Shiva
In 1996, the US earned $30 billion from royalties and licenses. On the other hand, the South spent $18 billion for buying patented technology in 1995.
-- Vandana Shiva
In certain cases, companies do not sell the technology in order to maintain a monopoly. This happened to India in the case of alternatives to CFCs, which were banned under the Montreal Protocol because they destroy the ozone layer. The US corporation which has patents on the alternatives to CFCs refused to license the technology to India.
-- Vandana Shiva
Third World countries are losing their technological capacities, while global corporations are keeping tight control over patented technologies when they move across borders.
-- Vandana Shiva
The global patent regime as determined by the TRIPs agreement is making the Third World lose twice over on the technology transfer front.
-- Vandana Shiva
A UNDP study shows that Third World countries are losing $300 million in unpaid royalties for farmers' seeds and over $5 billion in unpaid royalties for medicinal plants, if 2 per cent royalty was charged on biological diversity developed by Third World communities.
-- Vandana Shiva
Since knowledge is a social product, undermining the social fabric of knowledge generation and innovation will undermine its generation and transfer.
-- Vandana Shiva
An argument often made is that without IPRs there will be no incentive for research. But IPRs are changing the incentive system, from serving the public good to working for private gain. The knowledge community is giving way to the corporate university. Thus, a privately funded centre at MIT hires one third of the biologists on the faculty and thereby owns all the intellectual property they create.
-- Vandana Shiva
Openness, the free exchange of ideas and information, and the free exchange of ideas and information, and the free exchange of materials and techniques have been critical components in the creativity and productivity of the research community. By introducing secrecy in science, IPRs and the associated commercialization and privatization of knowledge will kill the scientific community, and hence in potential for creativity.
-- Vandana Shiva
Corporate sponsored research can create biased research, as has been shown by many studies, inordinately favouring corporate sponsors and undermining the public interest.
-- Vandana Shiva
Not only does the public interest disappear in research in corporate and IPR dominated systems, entire disciplines are erased as commercialization becomes the yardstick for assessing the relevance of teaching and research programmes.
-- Vandana Shiva
Once priorities shift from social need to potential return on investment, which is the main criterion for commercially guided research, entire streams of knowledge and learning will be forgotten and will go extinct. While these diverse fields might not be commercially profitable, they are socially necessary.
-- Vandana Shiva
The moment we ignore the useful and necessary and concentrate only on the profitable, we are destroying the social conditions for the creation of intellectual diversity.
-- Vandana Shiva
The ultimate logic of the privatization of knowledge is to define free exchange of knowledge as theft and
-- Vandana Shiva
Imperial power has always been based on a convergence of military power and used in the defence of trade. This convergence was at the heart of the gunboat diplomacy during colonialism. A similar convergence is now taking shape around the defence of trading interests in a period of globalization and so-called free trade. This can be seen in the legislation passed by the US Congress in 1996 which views the IPRs as vital to national security.
-- Vandana Shiva
Independence from economic interest has been the hallmark of knowledge institutions. Corporatisation is however transforming the nature of knowledge itself as commercial ties start to shape the research agenda and commercially-biased private interest knowledge displaces public interest knowledge.
-- Vandana Shiva
The British empire was built through the destruction of manufacturing capacities in the colonies and the prevention of emergence of such capacity. 'Free Trade' during the era of the 'technological superiority' of England was based on the thumbs of master weavers in Bengal being cut off, the forced cultivation of indigo by the peasants of Bihar, the slave trade from Africa to supply free labour to cotton plantations in the US and the extermination of the indigenous people of North America. It also included laws that prevented technology transfer. From 1765 to 1789, the English parliament passed a series of strict laws preventing the export of new machines or plans, or models of them.
-- Vandana Shiva
The Economic Espionage Act takes espionage from military domains to economic domains, it redefines intellectual property infringement as a crime, and justifies the use of intelligence agencies to deal with issues of science and technology exchange.
-- Vandana Shiva
The globalization of western-style IPR systems, in a world of deep inequalities, is a direct assault on the economic rights of the poor.
-- Vandana Shiva
When it comes to life forms, genetic scientists have gotten away with the claim that they have 'invented' and 'made' the living organism into which they have introduced a new gene and hence can claim it as their patented property, with the right to exclude others from 'making' it, using it and selling it, unless they pay royalties to the patent owner.
-- Vandana Shiva
Life forms 'make' themselves
-- Vandana Shiva
Columbus set the precedence in treating the license to conquer non-European peoples as a natural right of European men. The colonizers' freedom was built on the slavery and subjugation of the people with original rights to the land. This violent takeover was rendered 'natural' by defining the colonized people into nature, thus denying them their humanity and freedom.
-- Vandana Shiva
The takeover of territories and land in the past, and the biodiversity and indigenous knowledge now, is based on 'emptying' land and biodiversity of all relationships to indigenous people.
-- Vandana Shiva
Within indigenous communities, despite some innovations being first introduced by individuals, innovation is seen as a social and collective phenomenon and results if innovation are freely available to anyone who wants to use them.
-- Vandana Shiva
independence from economic interest has been the hallmark of knowledge institutions. Corporatisation is however transforming the nature of knowledge itself as commercial ties start to shape the research agenda and commercially-biased private interest knowledge displaces public interest knowledge.
-- Vandana Shiva
Biopiracy refers to the use of intellectual property systems to legitimize the exclusive ownership and control over biological products and processes that have been used over centuries in non-industrialized cultures. Patent claims over biodiversity and indigenous knowledge that are based on the innovation, creativity and genius of the people of the Third World are acts of 'biopiracy'.
-- Vandana Shiva
The rush to grant patents and reward invention has lead corporations and governments in the industrialized world to ignore the centuries of cumulative, collective innovation of generations of rural communities.
-- Vandana Shiva
Biopiracy occurs because of the inadequacy of western patent systems and the inherent western bias against other cultures.
-- Vandana Shiva
Western patent systems were designed for import monopolies, not for screening all knowledge systems to exclude existing innovations and establish prior art in other cultures.
-- Vandana Shiva
With knowledge plurality mutating into knowledge hierarchy, a horizontal order of diverse but equally valid and diverse systems is converted into a vertical ordering of unequal systems, with the epistemological foundations of the system being imposed on others to invalidate them. This translation of knowledge diversities into knowledge hierarchies is then used to claim acts of translation as acts of invention. Translation is misconstrued as the 'creation' of knowledge.
-- Vandana Shiva
Biopiracy and patenting of indigenous knowledge is a double theft because first it allows theft if creativity and innovation, and secondly, the exclusive rights established by patents on stolen knowledge steal economic options of everyday survival on the basis of indigenous biodiversity and knowledge.
-- Vandana Shiva
Collective rights cannot be abjured or relinquished by any one community of users, or any individual of any community, or the state on behalf of any community.
-- Vandana Shiva
The 'enclosure' of biodiversity and knowledge is the final step in a series of enclosures that began with the rise of colonialism. Land and forests were the first resources to be 'enclosed' and converted from commons to commodities. Later, water resources were 'enclosed' through dams, groundwater mining and privatization schemes. Now it is the turn if biodiversity and knowledge to be 'enclosed' by IPRs. In the globalization era, the commons are being enclosed and the power of communities is being undermined by a corporate enclosure in which life itself is being transformed into the private property of corporations.
-- Vandana Shiva
The corporate enclosure is happening in two ways. Firstly, IPR systems are allowing the 'enclosure' of biodiversity and knowledge, thus eroding the commons and the community. Secondly, the corporation is being treated as the only form of association with a legal personality.
-- Vandana Shiva
...instead of applauding Brazil for its success in fighting AIDS through generic drug production supported under its 1997 Patent Law, and making this kind of law a model, the US has taken Brazil to to the WTO dispute panel in order to force Brazil to undo Brazil's patent laws. If US patent monopolies are globalized through TRIPs as a result of being allowed to undo Brazil's patent laws, then millions of AIDS victims in the Third World will be denied affordable treatment and thus their right to life.
-- Vandana Shiva
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